Making The Last Beatles Song

When you think about iconic, legendary music bands, you think about The Beatles. Their catalog is timeless and some of the records they achieved at their peak back in the day are still being broken by contemporary artists, records that were set +50 years ago, and that’s a pretty remarkable task in itself. John, Paul, George, Ringo, Pete & Stuart are familiar names for most music fans, and their music has endured the test of time. But with most of them long gone, we can’t expect new music from them to come out, right? Well, this has been proven wrong again and again, with posthumous albums from acts like Michael Jackson being published thanks to old demos, technology and the contribution of other artists, and this is also the case for The Beatles with ‘Now & Then’.

A new short film takes us on a behind-the-scenes journey to see how this music event took place, posted on the official YouTube channel for the band: “Now and Then eventful journey to fruition took place over five decades and is the product of conversations and collaborations between the four Beatles that go on to this day. The long mythologised John Lennon demo was first worked on in February 1995 by Paul, George and Ringo as part of The Beatles Anthology project but it remained unfinished, partly because of the impossible technological challenges involved in working with the vocal John had recorded on tape in the 1970s. For years it looked like the song could never be completed. But in 2022 there was a stroke of serendipity. A software system developed by Peter Jackson and his team, used throughout the production of the documentary series Get Back, finally opened the way for the uncoupling of John’s vocal from his piano part. As a result, the original recording could be brought to life and worked on anew with contributions from all four Beatles. This remarkable story of musical archaeology reflects The Beatles’ endless creative curiosity and shared fascination with technology. It marks the completion of the last recording that John, Paul and George and Ringo will get to make together and celebrates the legacy of the foremost and most influential band in popular music history”.

“When we started ‘Now and Then,’ it was very difficult because John was sort of hidden in a way,” says Starr in the film released alongside the track. According to specialized music sites like Pitchfork, ‘Now and Then’, is on the weaker side of the posthumous singles released by the state managing the band’s legacy and McCartney, who is still alive. Mark Richardson from Pitchfork says: “To my ear, ‘Now and Then’ is pretty much impossible to imagine as an actual Beatles song, and it seems especially far from what might have been Lennon’s original intention. And yet, it’s enjoyable just the same”.

The main question is: how did they make this happen? Well, it was made thanks to artificial intelligence, but not the typical generative AI that is filling feeds and headlines lately. The new technology they used, allowed them to separate Lennon’s voice from the backing piano that accompanies the original track in a more smooth way (which wasn’t available in 1990 when they first tried to released this track), but it remains unclear if any software was used to replicate Lennon’s voice in any part of it. This opens new frontiers within the music industry for producers and sound engineers everywhere. Nowadays, once you extract the voice from a recording, you can edit it any way you want, from using autotune to fix the pitch or even swap the real voice for a more synthetic version of it. But just like what happens with AI in the design world, AI needs to be seen and used as a tool and not as a substitute for the human element of it all, which ultimately it’s what gives the final result a soul.

Heavily crafted by nostalgia, Paul used technology to expand his and his bandmates’ legacy, giving his fans one final tune to sing along. Despite what critics or haters might say, if you’re a Beatles fan, go on and listen, enjoy and let us know what you think, cause that’s the opinion we care about the most, the one of those who just want to enjoy a new tune from their favorite band and have some fun.